Wheelchair doesn’t slow down Ivalee student

Monday

Like most of his fellow classmates at Ivalee Elementary School, R.J. Clark is excited about summer break and ready to move on to fifth grade. He doesn’t like math and his favorite subject is recess.

Like most of his fellow classmates at Ivalee Elementary School, R.J. Clark is excited about summer break and ready to move on to fifth grade. He doesn’t like math and his favorite subject is recess.He already is making college plans. He wants to go to the University of Florida, and that has his principal, Ed Vance, perplexed.“I’ve tried to talk him out of that,” Vance said. Vance jokes with R.J. about his college choice, but he knows the youngster takes his plans seriously.“He has a great sense of humor and he is a great student,” Vance said.Vance spends a good bit of time with R.J., who has been a student at the school since first grade and is in a wheelchair.Vance said when he first found out R. J. would be enrolled at the school, he was concerned about how they would be able help him.“From day one, it hasn’t been a problem,” he said.R.J. was born with arthrogryposis, a disorder that fuses his joints and keeps him from being able to bend.However, his sense of humor keeps him going and it rubs off on those around him.“Thank goodness it didn’t affect his mouth muscles,” his mother, Teresa Clark, said. “There’s never a dull moment from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed.”R.J. is in Farrah Kilgo’s self-contained fourth-grade class. In that setting, he fits in with all the other students.“The kids know him and he knows them,” Vance said.The wheelchair often is the biggest reminder that he has a disability, but he has not let the chair slow him down.“He’s very independent,” Kilgo said. “He wants to do everything on his own and he does do everything he can possibly do.”Angie Devereux, a special education paraprofessional in the school system, has been with R.J. since first grade. She’s like his second mother.Being in the self-contained classroom has been a huge benefit for R.J.“He has come a long way since first grade,” Devereux said. “He didn’t finger paint or write. Now he can do it all.”One of his first outings in first grade was a class trip to Camp Sumatanga. “He had never been on a swing or a slide, and had such a good time that day,” Devereux said.She said R.J. tries to do everything he can on his own, regardless of his disability. “If he can’t do something, he won’t give up until he at least tries it,” she said.Vance said, “Now he is one of the better students in his class. He’s done a great job of overcoming so many obstacles.”All the other kids love R.J., Kilgo said, and reach out to help him.“He’s just a remarkable person,” she said. “And they learn from each other.”R.J.’s life has become a little easier in the last few months. He was fitted with a new motorized wheelchair made in Sweden. It allows him to be in a sitting or standing position — something he has never been able to do before.It took workers at the Alabama Department of Children’s Rehabilitation Service a year to get the expensive chair approved through R.J.’s insurance.He needed a chair that would recline and tilt for medical reasons, according to his physical therapist, Lisa Ellis. The new chair uses a combination of reclining, tilting and standing, and molds to his body.“Instead of making R.J. bend to a chair, we needed a chair that bent with him,” Ellis said.It makes tasks such as brushing his teeth, bathing and going to bathroom so much easier, his mother said.“I don’t have to move him to a recliner, either,” Teresa said. He can just rest in his chair to move his body to different positions.R.J. sometimes stays with his grandmother, Mabel Talley, and it also is easier on her.Before the new chair, he could not spend the night at her house. Now he can because its easier for her to move him from the chair to the bed.“I have to hold him like a log because he don’t bend,” his grandmother said.Dave Nix of Alabama Wheelchair Specialists in Birmingham made some adjustments to R.J.’s chair during a recent service trip to the Gadsden office of the Alabama Department of Children’s Rehabilitation Service.“We’re still tweaking it to make it better for him,” Nix said. “With R.J. we’ve had to think outside the box.”Emma Hereford, social work administrator at the Gadsden office of Children’s Rehabilitation Service, said several people in her office and Nix spent much of the past year brainstorming and researching.“We were trying to figure out the best chair for him,” Hereford said. “It took a lot of documentation to send to Medicaid to get it approved.”It was important, she said, to give R.J. more freedom. He never had felt the sensation of standing.R.J. often worried, too, with his old chair.“I was scared I would fall out before,” R.J. said. “I’m used to it now and I don’t worry.”For the Department of Rehabilitation Services, Hereford said, it’s all about independence.“That’s our goal, to make all our kids as independent as possible,” she said. Some adjustments also were needed to fit the new chair to the Clark home. It weighs 318 pounds, and transporting the chair is a huge endeavor because of its weight.“You have to make accommodations for all that,” Ellis said. “Folks forget how important family input is. Moms and dads can tell us what best fits their needs.”R.J. has been involved with Children’s Rehabilitation Services since he was 2 years old, Hereford said. His mother and father, Ronald, adopted R.J. when he was 6 years old. He lives with them and his two sisters, Courtney, 20, and Jessica, 14, who also are adopted and have special needs, in Ivalee.“They all came in calling us ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’” Teresa said.A highlight for the Clarks was a visit last year to Disney World in Florida.“It was so easy because of handicapped accessibility,” Teresa said. “The whole family can stay together and ride the rides together.”R.J. called Disney World “the most magical place on the planet.”He loves it so much, it influenced him in college choices and he describes himself as a Florida Gators fan.R.J. said he wants to be a video game designer, and those who know him best believe he will be able to do anything he sets his mind to.“It’s pretty obvious his disability doesn’t hold him back,” his mother said.

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